Every 12 months or so, most AV receiver models are religiously replaced by all the major manufacturers. Sometimes there are significant changes and sometimes the differences are more subtle, but designers will always be looking to improve on previous models, right?
Yamaha is one company that usually pulls out most, if not all the stops, with its new models and the RX-V2065 does offer plenty of additions over the popular RX-V1900 it replaces, but there are also a few features Yamaha has decided to leave off. More on that later.
Design and features
Visually, Yamaha's been uncluttering its receivers' fascias and done away with the customary flip down panel of previous designs. The latest look is clean and functional, whereas round the back, it's socket city as per usual.
The receiver boasts all the main features you'd expect at this price point — namely:
- Five HDMI ins and two outputs with front panel HDMI and USB port
- 1080p upscaling from any video input source
- Ethernet networking support and compatibility with Yamaha's MusicCAST home music server, and DLNA network devices
- A healthy seven 130 Watts per channel
- HD radio (although it's not much use here in Australia)
- Burr-Brown 192kHz/24-bit DACs for all channels
- HD Audio format decoding including Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio; Dolby Digital Plus and DTS-HD High Resolution Audio.
The feature list goes on and on but there are a couple of further highlights — it's nice to see Yamaha's sticking with a phono input for turntables, there's ample additional Zone and RS-232 support, and optional docks allow you to connect your iPod or Bluetooth device.
There are a couple of notable feature omissions though compared to previous models. Bar upscaling Yamaha's done away with on-board video signal processing and you're not able to manually assign the four digital audio inputs. This may not be the end of the world for many users — it simply boils down to whether or not you need such features from your AV receiver.
As has long been the norm with Yamaha's higher-end AV receivers, twin remotes are supplied; one's a full system learning handset, the other smaller remote covers just the basic controls. Setting everything up now means a colour Graphical User Interface (GUI) which not only looks snazzy, it makes finding your way around a doddle. The GUI also ties you in with internet radio listening when using a wired networked connection, displaying such info as the station database and geographical location, as well as bitrate and sampling frequency. It also comes in handy with networked music from a PC, displaying artist, album and track info.
Performance
An evening at the movies didn't take long to set up thanks to Yamaha's YPAO calibration system, which not only took care of auto measurements in a matter of a few minutes but proved accurate and reliable. We only had to make a couple of minor tweaks to the phase settings for our resident bipole surround speakers.
Despite having shed a few kilos compared to the model it replaces, the RX-V2065's power supply still managed to muster ample current and drive our Mission AV speaker system with more than sufficient potency. It strode effortlessly through the most demanding sequences of big action movies. Admittedly, the 130 Watts per channel figure claimed is a bit optimistic but the Yamaha still sounded gutsy and refined. The "torture test" tripod emergence scene in War of the Worlds contained no shortage of dynamic power as we pushed the RX-V2065 towards reference level and during quieter passages dialogue was delivered crisply and clearly. With such movies the Yamaha directed the audio with impressive realism from the placement and steering of surround effects, to the depth of vocal projection and overall natural clarity of the sound.
Stereo performance is more often than not the Achilles' heel of AV receivers, although designers have been cottoning on that they need to also sound the goods with music not just movies. Yamaha's been improving with its AV receivers in this regard and the RX-V2065 is better than most at holding a tune. The V2065 provides plenty of options about how it does so, from the purest form with all processing and unnecessary circuits switched out or you can choose from a wide variety of DSPs. In "Pure Audio" mode the Yamaha sounded pretty well balanced. Bass extension wasn't the lowest of the low, but had ample impact with gutsy rock, while its vibrant upper mid-band and treble gets the foot tapping without ever sounding overbearing or too brash.
We liked the way this new Yamaha conducted itself with a wide variety of material — even 1080p upscaling ancient Laserdiscs had us revisiting and really enjoying some of the 12-inch classics. It's obviously best fed with high quality HD sources and as long as you partner it with such, the lack of on-board video processing such as VRS isn't going to be much of an issue. And there's no need to ponder whether or not the RX-V2065 has what it takes to effectively drive an AV speaker system; it never once sounded less than fully in control, playing to volume levels that were, well, quite anti-social.
Conclusion
Not perhaps the "be all and end all" AV receiver in its price category, the RX-V2065 still has much on offer for any home theatre system looking for a decent hub. Its great connectivity and dual-simultaneous HDMI outputs are definite pluses, but most importantly of all, it sounds rather good with both film and music.
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